September 9, 2007
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Core Circle
Alean Haider
Stephanie Hiller
Mervis Reissig
Diana Young
Advisory Circle
Angela Dolmetsch
Jean Shinoda Bolen
Leslene della Madre
Danica Anderson
Riane Eisler
Ingrid Kepler-May
Inhui Lee
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Vicki Noble
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Warm Welcome in Kabul
Meeting the Women of the AWEP
By Stephanie Hiller
"The world of politics is not the world of romantic scenes or smiles.It's a world of interests." -- Mohammad Kazem Anbarlouee, editor of Resalat, a conservative Afghan newspaper
As the Kamair DC-10 dropped down to prepare for landing, a surge of excitement sped through the plane. Passengers craned to look out the windows at the brown barren mountains that ring the city. As I pulled my headscarf around me in preparation for landing on Islamic soil, an older woman about my age began chattering excitedly to me in Dari. I was too dazed to summon my few words of Farsi to say I didn't understand very well -- man Dari nemifarmeen, it comes easily now.
I could hardly believe I was actually in Afghanistan. I had been trying since 2003 to make this trip, but something had always stopped me. Now at last I was going to meet the women who are participating in our mini micro financing project, the Afghan Women's Empowerment Project (AWEP).
Bagram Airport is a humble, chaotic affair. We descended directly onto the tarmac and walked the few steps to the terminal, where we lined up in a small room and were handed entry forms. I was the last person to go through passport control. As I waited, I caught a glimpse of my dear friend, Alean Haider, program manager for the AWEP. Alean has been our link with the Afghan group since the beginning, when she handled the email correspondence from her desk at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA); during her four years as a student in the US, I got to know her well. I have great affection and admiration for this young woman who as a teenager taught classes to girls in her family home, while a Taliban guard stood unknowing across the street.
Once on the other side of the gate, I rushed to greet Alean and Suraia Perlika, the director of the All Afghan Women's Union, the women's group with whom we are working.
"I can't believe I am here!" I shouted over the din. "I can't believe it either," smiled Alean.
As we moved across the room to the small baggage carousel, a man gestured excitedly, speaking rapidly in Dari. Where were my luggage tickets? I had to burrow around to find them and wasn't having much luck. Alean said whatever needed to be said, and I recovered my luggage with great relief.
Off we went, out of the terminal and into the parking lot where Suraia's brother waited in a van. We packed in, I completely dazed (I am in Kabul! I am in Kabul!), trying to notice everything as we drove through traffic to the AAWU office which is housed in a small apartment in Microrayon, apartment blocks that were built by the Soviets during their occupation. There, Suraia had arranged a lunch and a meeting among the three of us at the huge table that served as their conference room. A small television was on in one corner. Light streamed in from the open window. On the opposite wall were shelves of books. I scanned to pick out the titles of some of the books we had sent to them long ago.
We dined on a lavish lunch of kabulli pilau (rice with raisins and carrots), an eggplant borani, roasted chicken legs, and a plate of cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and lemons that accompanies almost every meal.
Alean, who would serve as my translator as well as host, was leaving for graduate school in just a few days. I had the sense that Suraia might not have a lot of time to spend with me, so we jumped into the business of running the project and the immediate item at hand, which was to write an application for a grant from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), where Alean had worked for four years. We needed to complete our application and deliver it to their office before Alean left.
Suraia had lots of ideas for what we might include in the grant, and we engaged in quite a lot of dialogue about what might be appropriate for this proposal. She wanted, for example, to start a training center in one of the poorer districts where recipients of small loans would work together on a business. It's an idea that appealed to me greatly; creating women's centers has long been one of my favorite plans. But renting a place and staffing it, as well as providing trainers, was going to cost more money than Alean and I thought we had any chance of receiving.
Then there was Suraia's list of equipment. She wanted Internet service, a laptop, a projector and so forth.
Suraia, who is 63, has been working all her life for Afghan women, beginning during the Soviet era, later as head of the Red Crescent (the Muslim counterpart of the Red Cross) and then as the director of this organization, which she created. Although she has visited the US several times, she has never chosen to emigrate from her country. Her dedication to women once landed her in jail, and another time in hospital after a severe beating. Yet she carries on, a soft spoken little lady with a wide smile. She has given plenty of her own money to these endeavors, but her ideas exceed her financial capacity. She wants to do so much! But finding the money is another problem.
We managed to wade through this interchange amicably, with Alean getting a little frustrated trying to translate my responses to Suraia, who only unwillingly surrendered some of her requests.
We created a schedule for the next few days, and I told Alean that I needed to change some money and pick up a Sim card for my cell phone. Yes, yes everything would be done. She picked up her little cell phone (everyone has a cell phone in Kabul), called her brother Faisal who was to be my driver, he arrived and we dived into the helter-skelter streets of the city in the little Toyota he had rented from a friend.
"No problem!" Faisal drove me all around Kabul.
I was to spend much of my time riding around these streets. The streets are wide, and divided by a single graying line in the middle. On each side there is room for two to three lanes of traffic, but as there are no marked lanes, cars curve and converge into each other in whatever way suits their purposes, stopping and starting up again whenever there's room to move. There are no traffic lights and only the occasional traffic cop at important intersections. Every so often Faisal would lower the windows all at once, letting in hot air laden with fumes and dust; that was because the car has tinted windows, which is illegal, Alean explained; he lowered the windows whenever he saw police.
Suddenly he pulled over to one side and leaned over the seat to ask me about the money I wanted to change?
Beside the car were a couple of dust-covered men, each holding a bundle of cash.
I gave him a hundred dollars and he passed it out the window to one of the men, who soon counted out 4900 afghanis into Faisal's outstretched hand.
The Afghans4Tomorrow guesthouse is located some distance from downtown, in a district called Demazang for the mountain that hovers behind it. This district was devastated during the years of war. We turned off the main road into a rutted dirt street, bouncing down the block and around the corner to the guesthouse, where Faisal jumped out to ring the buzzer high on the wall beside the metal gates. Its ring, of which I was soon to get quite tired. was a little jingle much like the tones on cell phones.
An affable fellow in shalwar kameez (the typical Afghan attire, worn by men and women as well, long shirt over pants) opened the gates and ushered us in. His name was Abdul Raman, the name of a 19th century king. He is one of the guards. With his wide grin and playful manner, he reminded me of an Afghan Danny Kaye. Shutting and bolting the gates behind us, he ushered us into the house. Alean and Faisal stood observing for a few minutes as I took off my shoes and Abdul Raman carried my bags up a flight of stairs to the rooms. Najibullah, country director of A4T, a small, tidy man with short curly hair, a clipped beard and thick spectacles, came out to greet me. He was the only English speaker in the house. He introduced me to Farida, who spoke French and Dari. As Najib would be going home to his family every evening, I was going to have lots of opportunity to practice my halting French!
Afghans4Tomorrow is an organization of Afghan American professionals who fund projects in Afghanistan. It runs four schools and a health center.
Alean and Faisal departed, with promises to pick me up in the morning, Friday, for a day of pleasure touring. Friday is the Muslim sabbath.
And I settled in.
I was awakened around 3 AM by the first call to prayer, a droning intonation resounding more like doom than inspiration, at least to my ears. It was 6 PM in where I live, and I was awake.
The second call to prayer was followed by the sounds of men praying, then a sermon echoed out across the canyon.
As day dawned, I sat by the window watching the street come to life. The upper story of the house across the street was destroyed, except for a piece of one wall left tremulously standing. A woman, full scarved even though surrounded by a high wall, came out from behind the curtained doorway and moved about the courtyard, apparently doing morning chores. Under a pile of blankets I saw a child's arm emerge and stretch. They had been sleeping in the courtyard. The woman moved back and forth, soon followed by the child. There were two other women as well.
The man of the house, middle-aged, dressed in a white shalwar kameez, came out into the street and stood perusing the neighborhood with hands folded behind his back, master of all he purveyed. He strolled a little way up the hill, then turned and came back. He stood for some time on the corner, hands still folded behind his back.
On the opposite corner, a large 18-room house was almost completed.
I heard a clatter of hooves and saw a turbaned old man lead a flock of 20 sheep up the street. A little later, two children came running down the hill carrying 5-gallon plastic jugs. At the corner, they met a man whose donkey carried water in two large saddlebags. The children filled their jugs and trudged back up the hill. I could not tell whether they paid him for the water or not.
A motorcar went by. The family in the courtyard was sitting in a row on a little ledge in front of their house, eating breakfast.
Outside the courtyard, a white-bearded man removed a tarp from the tiny stall that served as his little shop. I was told that he had played the mullah in Osama, the movie about the desolate poverty of the people in Kandahar. In the film, a widowed woman was so destitute that she gave her young daughter to this mullah to be his second wife.
This man had remained in Demazang throughout the war. When A4T moved into its present quarters, he was the only person still living there. It had been bombed so heavily that all the people had fled. In the three years since, people have returned to their houses and begun fixing them up. Dozens of little mud houses have popped up on the side of the mountain. Most of them have no running water. Warlords have invested in property, building fancy structures like the one across the street to rent to rich returning Afghans, NGO workers or other Westerners. The average Afghan cannot begin to afford rents of $2000 a month. The sound of hammering and drilling can be heard every day, but not today, a holiday.
A cement ditch runs along the sidewalk, full of black water conveying other things.
I watched as the man from Osama used a shovel to lift water from the ditch and toss it around his stall to keep down the dust.